Pirate Bay Proxy Closed After BPI Pressure

Max 'Beast from the East' Smolaks covers open source, public sector, startups and technology of the future at TechWeekEurope.
If you find him looking lost on the streets of London, feed him coffee and sugar.

The BPI represents music copyright holders and its members include such giants as the Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. After the political organisation refused to shut down the proxy voluntarily, the BPI sent out six letters addressed to the elected members of the party’s National Executive Committee and the head of IT, warning that it would take them to High Court.

Pirate Party can’t fight the system

In April, the High Court ordered five major British ISPs to block access to the Pirate Bay, on the grounds it facilitated copyright infringement. The decision came after the BPI failed to negotiate voluntary blocking.

However, by July, the amount of peer-to-peer traffic returned to its pre-ban levels, thanks in part to the proxy servers that allowed to circumvent the block, run by organisations like PPUK.

Earlier, the Pirate Party had said that taking the proxy down was not “something it can agree to”, and promised to fight the BPI. It even launched a fundraising campaign, in order to put together a legal team that would be capable of keeping the server online. The leader of the party Loz Kaye said it was unclear whether hosting a gateway to a blocked website goes against UK law.

However, on Monday evening, fundraising efforts were stopped and the proxy disappeared. According to TorrentFreak, Pirate Party members refused to provide any comment on the issue, after being instructed to do so by their solicitors.

As it turns out, hosting a Pirate Bay proxy is not as harmless as it sounds. “Despite attempts by elected members to resolve this situation, the law at present is clear and makes any decision to continue hosting the proxy untenable,” commented Frances Nash, IP lawyer at Ralli solicitors, on behalf of the PPUK.

“This is not the outcome the party wanted however, any challenge to this proposed action would make it financially impossible for the party to deal with other issues for which they actively campaign on a daily basis.

“The Pirate Party strongly believe that site blocking is both disproportionate and ineffective and will continue to lobby for digital rights and their wider manifesto,” he added.

There’s always ways and means to get around this. If I use my mobile hotspot I can access the site, find the torrents and then switch back to my 70meg fibre connection to complete the downloads. Simples.